


who tells your story

by kitsunerei88



Series: Revolutionary Arc Plus Extras [18]
Category: Revolutionary Arc - kitsunerei88
Genre: Bystander, Fear, Gen, In-Universe Text, Memoirs, Meta, War, textbooks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 09:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30086952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunerei88/pseuds/kitsunerei88
Summary: The Wizarding British Revolution of 1996-1997 is a landmark of our recent history. Before the war, Wizarding Britain was governed by rule of privilege, not rule of law; it was one nation, rather than three. It was infamous for its regressive blood discrimination policies, while modern Wizarding England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland all take strong stances against pureblood supremacy. Today, it is difficult to understand the mindset of the thousands of witches and wizards who followed Voldemort, or Lord Riddle before him, and the positions that they espoused.Presented in its third edition is the war memoir of Edmund Aloysius Rookwood (d. 16 June 1997), with a new afterword from Lord Aldon Étienne Blake Rosier, war hero and his closest childhood friend.(Required Reading at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Year 3, History of Magic)
Relationships: Edmund Rookwood & Aldon Rosier
Series: Revolutionary Arc Plus Extras [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722145
Comments: 11
Kudos: 17





	who tells your story

History will paint me in the wrong: as a pureblood supremacist, my name and my wife's written alongside a name that will become synonymous with evil. We lived in his house—we breathed the same air, we rubbed shoulders with his believers, and I fought by their side when they demanded it. And when things turned from bad to worse, we stayed.

We stayed because we were afraid. We stayed, because we believed it was the only way to survive what came next; we stayed, because it was the only thing that we could think to do. Perhaps we were cowards—perhaps we should have seen the storm before it came, and perhaps if we had, things would have gone differently.

It is the 7th of June, 1997. The end of the war is inevitable; Voldemort has lost Ireland, Scotland, the English North and the West Country, the Ministry of Magic, and every international port. A coalition of MACUSA and ICW Aurors patrol the Muggle cities. The only thing remaining on this side of the war is fear: fear, and too many families that, like mine, were too afraid to jump when we had the opportunity. I do not want Voldemort to succeed, and I never did—but I will not live to see his defeat, not with the execution order that hangs over my head.

These are my final nights, and these are my last words. Let the record show that I was not a pureblood supremacist—let the record show that I was not unfaithful, and that I was only afraid. Let this record tell my story where I cannot.

My name is Edmund Aloysius Rookwood. I was not a pureblood supremacist, and this is my story.

* * *

_8 June 1997_

I suppose I cannot begin with anyone other than Aldon Étienne Blake Rosier: my closest childhood friend, almost my brother. We met when we were four or five—my father did business with his, and being of an age, I was invited to his home. Aldon was an earnest child, one that I believe was eager to please and who perhaps lacked for other friends, and I quickly found myself invited more and more to Rosier Place. When I accepted, as I often did, I could see that Aldon took care to pick activities that he believed I would like. There were trips to magical menageries, and many of them, though I learned later that Aldon himself had no special interest in magical creatures as I did.

Through the years, I learned that he was a boy—a man, now—with depths. On the surface, it was rare for him to wear anything other than a light-hearted smile, and yet I knew that he could work hard, when there was something that he desired. He desired my friendship, and he went far out of his way to obtain it; he would do the same for others. I knew this, and it was one of the first things I learned about him, and yet in the end I was still surprised by it.

His family was noble—a minor Book of Copper nobility, but noble, nonetheless. The Rosiers were also quite wealthy, a fact that was well-known in Society, and I never knew Aldon to have anything except the best of everything. I think that this made his depths all the more surprising. Aldon was a person who got everything that he wanted, everything that I imagined that he could want, and I rarely saw him desire something that was not simply handed to him. It was easy to forget how hard he could work for the things that he wanted.

Aldon also made no effort to show his depths. Indeed, when we were both Sorted into Slytherin House at school, I believe he went out of his way to emphasize the more flippant aspects of his personality. He always had a smile close to hand, along with a few flippant, easy remarks. I would say that while he was friendly with all, there were few that were close to him. I and my wife were likely the sole exceptions, and this became even more true after Aldon discovered his blood status.

I was the first to suspect. It was obvious that Aldon had discovered a gift after his thirteenth birthday, for he began reacting to statements in ways that he had not previously. Quick frowns or grimaces, nearly too quick for anyone to notice, became commonplace; he also occasionally referenced knowledge that he could not have reasonably had. I suspected Natural Legilimency, or perhaps Empathy, despite the fact that his line held no trace of either gift, but Aldon said nothing on the matter.

I think it is important to understand how far this was outside the norm—for Aldon, and for our society. Magical gifts are to be celebrated, and Aldon was never one to pass up the opportunity for wide congratulations without reason. More importantly, he did not tell me, and I knew well that he considered me his closest friend, almost a brother. Aldon kept secrets, but he did not keep them from me. The fact that he said nothing about his newfound gift was worrying, and I knew there had to be more to it.

He did not tell me for many years. To some degree, this is my fault—I had become so used to Aldon choosing his time to confide in me that I did not realize that I had to push him. In retrospect, I believe that this was a continuing error on my part; I always assumed that, were anything wrong, Aldon would tell me. I became used to him telling me everything, and I did not think, until it was too late, to push him for anything more.

I did push him on this question when we were our sixth year at Hogwarts. Aldon had been distant that summer, unusually so, and three years past time I realized he would not tell me unless I pushed. He told me that he was a halfblood; and the fact that I did not reject him may now be the clearest evidence of my own beliefs on pureblood supremacy. I did not reject Aldon because he was a halfblood. I do not believe I rejected Aldon at all—even today, standing on two opposite sides of a war, I love and care for him deeply.

My views on pureblood supremacy are difficult for me to explain and will be even more difficult for future generations to understand. Simply put, I did not believe that Muggleborns or halfbloods had lesser magic or capabilities than purebloods, nor did I find any substance in the later much-touted arguments that Muggleborns and halfbloods were dangerous. I did not believe that purebloods had better magical control. I had long supposed that Hogwarts continued to have many halfbloods attending under falsified family trees, and that there were far more halfbloods and even Muggleborns in the populace than most suspected.

Where did I fall short?

I did not believe anything could be done about pureblood supremacy. I was not noble—while I later gained nobility through marriage, I never sat in the Wizengamot and even if I had, I would only have been one vote among many, and one vote could never have overturned the presiding sentiment. I believed, I think, that the law was what it was, and it was an obstacle that had to be worked around, but I never considered fighting it. Or, more precisely: I did not believe it was something that could be fought at all. Pureblood supremacy was a monolith, and there was little I, as an individual, could do about it.

The little that I could do, I believe that I did. It was on my recommendation that we advised Harry Potter, then known as Rigel Black, about the upcoming Marriage Law legislation. A friendly warning, from one friend to another, and I had assumed that he and his family would find a way around it for his cousin. I did not think that the law could be stopped outright, and in that respect, the facts show that I was entirely correct; the law was passed only four short years later.

My wife is very much the same. Blood discrimination, and pureblood supremacy as a whole, did not affect her. She is pureblooded through five generations, as I am through three, and the laws did not affect us. While we did not believe they had any merit or basis, they were the prevailing beliefs of our time and in our company, and we had no interest in losing our own status. As my wife often says, "no one wants to risk losing when they don't have to."

I did not appreciate the impact of Aldon's blood status on him. Regardless of whatever his actual blood status might be, Aldon had the perfect guise as a pureblood. He was in the Sacred Twenty-Eight, and both his acknowledged parents were members of the same. I thought that this was merely a personal matter, and that with my validation and support, he would simply come to terms with the fact of his biological parentage and move on. I did not expect him to take any other action, and I regret that I did not see what was coming until it was too late—far, far, too late.

Aldon was never secretive with me. I suppose this seems like a foolish thing to say, given that I have spent the last page or so detailing his secretiveness with his blood status, but blood status was, I thought, an exception. It was understandable that Aldon would not share the secret of his blood status with me, and once we had resolved that, I believed that he continued telling me everything. I know now that he did not.

I should have seen him changing. In hindsight, it was so obvious; Aldon had always been highly analytical, gravitating towards theoretical subjects rather than the practical, and towards our final years at Hogwarts he took more than a purely theoretical interest in a few things. There was Rigel Black, though I think many were interested in Rigel Black, and there was the Triwizard Tournament. But even as I saw these things, I only saw them in isolation. I never considered that these were only signs of a deeper sea change.

To be entirely fair to me, he did not speak to me of any of his thoughts, his worries, or his changing beliefs. I saw that he withdrew after Harry Potter escaped from Hogwarts at the end of the Tournament, but as I said, Aldon had always had more than a purely analytical interest in her anyway; I assumed that his withdrawal, and his drinking on the night of her escape, were related. When I could not break through to him by pushing, I asked Alexander Willoughby to attempt it, and afterwards Aldon seemed to have been comforted. He was himself again, attentive to his work and his surroundings, and at my wedding he was himself—light-hearted, cheerful, and with an easy smile.

Never would I have thought that he had anything else on his mind when I left.

* * *

_9 June 1997_

When I returned from my honeymoon, nearly six months after my wedding, the first thing my wife and I did once we were settled in the Selwyn Estate was look for Aldon. We were not successful—and beyond that, we were shocked. I will be the first to admit that I paid little to no attention to the news while we were abroad, and for us, the news of Aldon invoking Justice for the Arcturus Rigel Black trial, his scandal and disownment, and the Marriage Law came in one fell blow. I think that the fact that they did all come at once for us may have led to our own reaction to his new state.

For Aldon, I realize now that these events must have happened over a series of weeks or months, with time for him to change, adapt, and cope with his new circumstances. We had thought that we would have returned from our honeymoon, a mere six months later, to find Aldon unchanged from the person that we remembered; we were wrong. We then imagined that he had suffered in the past months, that he was newly fallen from grace and ashamed, and it is only in that context that our own reaction can be understood.

For us, the solution to Aldon's problems was painfully obvious. Aldon had been disowned because of his blood status, but an easy path had opened for his reintegration into pureblood Society. All he needed to do was marry a pureblood. Aldon was even of the appropriate age to marry, and I knew well that Aldon had never been especially romantic about his future obligations as the Lord Rosier. We had even spoken of the topic before; he had expressed his congratulations at my good fortune in finding love in such an advantageous match and said that he would be fortunate to be so lucky.

Alice and I did not understand what could possibly be holding Aldon back from taking the obvious solution to his problems, and we were deeply concerned for him. We began searching for him, only to discover a greater puzzle: no one knew where he had gone. We had assumed that he was staying with one of his acquaintances or other friends, but all our inquiries went nowhere—neither was he staying with my family, the Rookwoods, though my family would have welcomed him. He was nowhere in Diagon or even Knockturn Alleys, nor was he in Hogsmeade or any other major wizarding community. The Lord Rosier did not respond to my owls, and so I wrote to Aldon directly.

What words are there to describe our meeting? Shock is easy, as are confusion, consternation, and concern. We were stunned, appalled, dismayed; dumb-founded, horror-struck, almost offended. This was not the Aldon that we knew—this was a different Aldon, come to take his place.

Aldon did not come in through the Floo, as we expected—nor did he come in through the entrance to Diagon Alley. Indeed, we did not see him when he first entered, coming through the Muggle entrance as he did, and it was only when he slid into our booth that we recognized him at all. He had cut his hair shorter than acceptable in Society, in a style that we had never seen before, short on the sides but long on top, which he pushed back to keep the wet from his eyes. He was soaking, the evidence of a run through the rain, and his clothes—

He was not in robes. His collared shirt and trousers were black but were tailored in a way that was foreign to us, and his waistcoat had no sleeves. That alone, I think we could have accepted, but his coat was clearly Muggle in design. We could tell, even with a short glance, that it was made of no material that we knew—it was soft in appearance, and yet water droplets clung to its surface instead of soaking through the fabric.

I remember his first words—not to us, but to a server in the Leaky Cauldron. "Do you take pounds?" he asked with a smile and no notice that he was asking anything odd at all. "I'm sorry, I forgot to bring any Galleons this morning, and I only have pounds. I haven't had the chance to change monies in some time."

If there was any more shocking way for Aldon to mark that he was no longer the person we knew, I do not know of it. We listened as Aldon said, more offhand than we could have ever imagined, that he no longer went into wizarding areas, as he referenced taking Muggle transportation instead of wizarding Floo, Apparation, or other methods, that he was learning to live in the Muggle world. He said he worked, though we knew not where—he said he was making friends, though we knew not with whom. And yet they were not the most concerning things that he said.

My wife has always been more forward than I. I prefer, as I always have, to retreat to consider my options fully before taking any of them. My wife had no compunctions about pushing Aldon on these differences, and on his choices, and in retrospect I can see that Aldon might have considered her abrasive. But I think it important to say that Alice asked what we were both thinking.

Aldon did not need to take the risks that he had over the summer, which resulted in the loss of his blood status and his disownment both. There was an easy solution available to him through the Marriage Law, and yet he seemed to be avoiding it. Again, while neither my wife nor I are pureblood supremacists, we considered blood discrimination to simply be a fact of life. It was something to be negotiated, worked through, an obstacle to be overcome—but not something that we ever considered fighting.

But Aldon wanted to fight it. Aldon called the laws wrong, and he didn't accept that he needed to hide his blood status to participate in Society. He did not want to marry to restore his status and preferred avoiding wizarding areas to accepting simple reality.

Instead, he said he wanted more: more than easy solutions, more than a marriage of convenience, more than accepting his new reality. He talked about widespread emancipation, about a complete repeal of all the blood discrimination laws, about falling in love and marrying on his own terms. And he was willing to die for it.

He sounded absolutely mad. And then, before we could reason with him further, he left.

More than a year later, it's clear that Aldon had not gone mad. It's clear now, though it was not then, that Aldon dared to dream big—and I erred, as I had before, in forgetting that Aldon was always capable of working hard when he wanted something. We failed to think that Aldon had had time to adapt to his new circumstances, almost six months of time that he did not spend anywhere near as indolently as we had imagined. We assumed that he wanted his old life back, though it should have been painfully obvious to us right from his words that this assumption was wrong. But at the time, we knew nothing about his new world. At the time, we were convinced that the trial, his scandal, and his disownment had driven him mad.

We worried about him deeply. If there is nothing else that anyone takes from this, it is that we cared very much for our friend. But we didn't know what to do; we didn't know how to save our friend from himself, not without making things infinitely worse.

Alice thought that he would fail. Aldon was always very used to his comforts—he was, as I have noted, from one of the wealthiest families in Wizarding Britain. That standard of living was not one, Alice said, that could be replicated elsewhere, and she thought he would become exhausted and reach out to us for assistance in time. As for me, I simply didn't know what to write.

There was time, I thought. And then there was the Ministry Unity Ball.

* * *

_10 June 1997_

I did not expect Aldon to attend the Ministry Unity Ball. It was a Society event, and Aldon himself had said that he was avoiding the wizarding world. I still did not know what he was doing, where he was working, nor where he was living, and in truth—it simply never occurred to me that he would attend.

When he did, it was again a shock. Again, he wasn't wearing robes—again, he wore Muggle clothing, and this time he had a woman on his arm, similarly dressed in Muggle clothing.

I feel that I need to clarify something about my shock for future generations. Yes, I had seen Aldon before in Muggle clothing—yes, Aldon had spoken to Alice and I quite openly about his new beliefs. But this was different.

This was Aldon acting on his new beliefs—this was Aldon appearing, in Wizarding Society, wearing his new beliefs in the form of his clothing and his company.

I don't think I even believed what I was seeing, at first. No, rather, I am fairly certain I did not, even with the clear evidence in front of me. Aldon approached us first when he came into the Ball: myself, my wife, along with two of our friends, Lucian Bole and Adrian Pucey. He was, for lack of a better word, himself again—his attitude was light and easygoing, one that I remembered well from our past.

It was in all the other things that he was different. There was the Muggle clothing, as I had mentioned, and there was the woman on his arm, who he introduced to us as Francesca Lam. What can I say about her? Especially then, when I knew less about her than I was able to later surmise?

Then, I could see that she was beautiful, and she was the kind of beautiful I knew to be very attractive to Aldon. She was slight in stature, rather shy and hesitant in her demeanour, and it was easy to see how tightly she clung to Aldon. I could see the comb shining in her hair, gold dotted with seven large pearls; I did not know whether it was a gift from Aldon, or simply a choice of jewellery, but had Aldon still been a Rosier it would have been a clear marker of Aldon's love. When she spoke, I realized that she was an American, and as the conversation flowed, we learned that she was a Muggleborn.

But she was not only a Muggleborn—she was a Muggleborn that had never been chosen by a wand. Aldon laughed about it, but it is the wand that makes the wizard, and I think some of our circle believed her to be a Muggle entirely. At the same time, however, she spoke intelligently about both runes and paper magic and she clearly had the ability to do both. We did not know what to make of her, especially when, even in the middle of her shyness and hesitancy, she said that, simply because her magic was new, that didn't mean that it was lesser.

I am sure that her words were nothing to her. I am sure that, in America, she was likely only repeating the common consensus. But in Wizarding Britain, these words are inflammatory—the assumption that Muggleborn magic is lesser is so fully ingrained in our culture that her quiet and hesitant words came off as ignorant and wrong.

It was as if she had stated that sky was purple. There are times where the sky is purple—the early predawn, or late in a sunset—but the sky is not purple. It wasn't right, and despite my beliefs which are very much against pureblood supremacy, her words were uncomfortable to me in a way that I struggle to express. It was not that I believed she was wrong. I did not think she was wrong, but hearing the words spoken aloud in such a matter-of-fact way was somehow still shocking.

My wife said what we were all thinking. This was not the Aldon that we knew—this was Aldon committing social suicide of the highest order, and apparently completely oblivious to that fact. Before, with only the scandal and disownment, it would not have been difficult to restore his status. The right marriage would lead to a return of his blood status, and the Lord Rosier would have welcomed Aldon home. Appearing at the Ball in Muggle clothing with someone likely to be seen as a Muggle, however, was beyond rescue. My wife was not wrong to express her concerns.

Aldon's reply, however, was even more shocking. I have said before that I did not think Aldon was a romantic; he was always pragmatic about his obligations in that realm. And yet, Aldon seemed completely prepared to leave everything he knew for this woman, which was very unlike him. It is, I think, for this reason that I initially doubted.

It made more sense to me, in conjunction with Aldon's words at our meeting the month prior, that Aldon was somehow using the Unity Ball to make a point. I found it difficult to believe that he had fallen so deeply in love with any woman, let alone a Muggleborn woman, that he would do something so contrary to his analytical and reasonable nature. A political ruse, to point out the failings of pureblood supremacy in some way, made more sense. It even made sense with the dance demonstration that he and Francesca did later that night, for I could tell easily that this was something that had been very meticulously planned, practiced, and organized.

Meticulous planning was part of the Aldon that I knew. It did not occur to me, however, that Aldon could both meticulously plan a show and also be deeply in love with Francesca Lam. More importantly, perhaps, it did not occur to me that Francesca Lam was only one part of a wider support system that Aldon had surrounded himself with, one that no longer included me.

It sounds very selfish for me to say such a thing, but again, I think it important that one considers the long friendship that held between Aldon and I. Aldon was the sort of person who had many acquaintances, but few close friends, so I did not imagine that he could have found other friends in the mere six months that I was away. He had not established new friendships in many years, though there was ample opportunity; why now? I knew Aldon, or I believed I did.

I knew that his relationship with Francesca was real when he kissed her at the end of their performance. This was not Aldon—beyond his clothing, beyond bringing his Muggleborn friend to a major Society event, this was not Aldon on a very deep level.

Aldon, like Alice and I and most Dark Society purebloods, was raised to be more conservative than not with public displays of affection. While we might engage romantic relations prior to or outside of marriage, such activities are not encouraged and are never flaunted. Aldon kissing his Muggleborn beloved before all of Society was obscene, and more than that, it was an _unnecessary_ obscenity. Were Francesca a political ruse of some kind, Aldon's point was amply made just by his appearance with her and their dance performance. He kissed her because he wanted to kiss her, and for no other reason.

If the kisses were not enough to demonstrate the depth of Aldon's feelings for this woman, it was less than an hour later that he had challenged Caelum Lestrange to a duel over her honour. At this point, I was perhaps shocked beyond the point of shock, well beyond the limits of understanding, and I do not think I could have been any more shocked regardless of what Aldon did next.

Historians will wonder, I think, why I agreed to act as Caelum Lestrange's second in that duel. I was not close to Lestrange—our fathers were friends, and my father was his godfather, but I never knew Lestrange well nor did I like what I did know of him. And yet, when Lestrange asked me to act as his second, I agreed.

I was trying to save Aldon. I knew Aldon would ask me to act as his second if he had the opportunity, and indeed, I did not think that he had a connection to anyone else that would be able to act as his second. I believed that, with me already spoken for, Aldon would have no choice but to forego a second altogether, and that I would have the opportunity to speak to him privately during the negotiation of seconds. During that time, I planned on reasoning with him—I was sure, I thought, that I could make Aldon come to his senses. Aldon was not a dueller.

I write these words now and I cannot help but laugh at my own foolishness. Aldon is not a dueller, but he is something quite different, as the duel itself demonstrated. Aldon was always capable of working hard when there was something that he wanted, a fact that I was wont to forget, and it turned out that he also had a degree of ruthlessness that I had not anticipated. It has served him well in the past year, I know—I would not have thought my childhood friend was capable of many of the things that he has done in this war, most particularly the incredible casualty rates of any strike on his manor. I should have been the one who knew him best, and yet I consistently underestimated him.

My plans to speak to Aldon during the negotiation of seconds failed, for the simple reason that Lord Nealan Queenscove agreed to act as Aldon's second. I knew nothing of the Lord Queenscove—by the time I had returned from my honeymoon, his appearance among the wizarding noble ranks had already been commented on and essentially forgotten. I knew him to be a young Lord, educated abroad, and he was already said to be in the ranks of the Light faction. I did not know that he had developed a close friendship to Aldon, one which had him agreeing to act as a second for a formal duel of honour.

I could not help but watch Lord Queenscove as he stepped forward. He was not dressed in any clothing that I recognized—his trousers were thin, clinging to his legs, and his tunic was long and heavily decorated with his coat of arms. He wore a sword at his waist, and it was only because of my experience in the Triwizard Tournament and our travels through Wizarding China that I recognized him for what he was: a traditional Chinese heirloom-caster.

Aldon walked over to Queenscove and his family, and he was quickly joined by several other international witches and wizards that I did not recognize. I could tell, even from a distance, how different Aldon's interactions were with them than he was with us, or indeed with any other person of our acquaintance. I know not how to describe it—there was a looseness about his shoulders, a disappearance of the tension in his movements that I now saw had haunted him the entire evening. Aldon did not stand alone, as I had assumed that he would.

It is awful to say, but I felt as though I had been replaced. I expected Aldon to stand alone without me there; I expected him to have little or no other options. As I said, I was always the closest of Aldon's friends, and Aldon was not one to make friends easily. I am, of course, glad that he did not—but in the moment, I could not help but feel as though I had lost something, and perhaps I had.

I remember my negotiation with the Lord Queenscove—the conversation is burned into my memory. I was the first out on the floor, and I watched him approach with confidence, one hand on his sword hilt. His expression was serious, but he still smiled in greeting.

"Neal Queenscove," he said, holding out a hand. I didn't know what to do with it, so I ignored it. He did not bow in greeting, as would generally have been polite.

"Edmund Rookwood, the Heir Selwyn," I replied, and I confess that I was rather stiff while I did so. I was offended that he did not greet me formally and taken aback by his casual introduction. Perhaps, too, I was offset by the mere fact that, in accepting the request to act as a second, he denied my plans, or by my sense that he had taken what I saw as my place beside Aldon. "How has your evening been?"

The man shrugged. I do not think he was much older than I. "Fine, until now," he said calmly, his smile disappearing. "Aldon only wants Lestrange to withdraw his comment, nothing else. I don't think that's unreasonable, given the comment that was made. Rather racist, comparing Francesca to a monkey, don't you think?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I replied flatly, because I did not. To this day, I do not understand what he meant. "Mr. Lestrange is rather upset at this challenge—his precise words were that Aldon should go and… service himself. In the rear."

Queenscove snorted. "If that's your way of saying that he should go fuck himself in the ass, you can just use the words."

I ignored his comment. "I can, however, talk him down if Aldon simply withdraws his challenge. No apology needed."

Queenscove's green eyes narrowed. "And why would Aldon need to apologize? It was Lestrange who said that he had fucked a monkey in front of all of Society; I think that Aldon and Francesca both are owed an apology, rather than having to give one. Retract the insult, and we can all walk away."

"This is Wizarding Britain, Lord Queenscove." I shook my head. "Lesser-blooded mages hear worse daily. I am not saying that it is right that they do so, but it should be easy for Aldon and his—lover—to let this go. Mr. Lestrange does not believe he ought to retract the statement, because he was only saying what many others were thinking."

"Is that what you were thinking, Rookwood?"

I could see that Queenscove's left hand had tightened on his sword. "No, not I," I said, with another shake of my head. "But he is not wrong—there are others, I am sure, who were thinking so but who were too polite to say so. Lord Queenscove, I do not know how well you know Aldon—"

"Well enough," Queenscove ground out.

"Aldon does not know how to duel." I stared at him, trying to see if he understood what I was saying. However well Queenscove knew Aldon, I did not think he could possibly know Aldon better than I. I still do not. "Aldon cannot duel. He barely passed Defense Against the Dark Arts and did not take it beyond his fifth year, and while he was in the Duelling Club, it was only because I pressured him that he took part at all. He is not a fighter, Lord Queenscove. He cannot win, and I strongly hope that you will counsel him to drop the matter entirely. He must see sense."

"I believe in Aldon," Queenscove replied icily, his eyes flashing. "He says for you to tell Lestrange that he looks forward to eliminating a potential challenger to the Rosier seat. I don't think we have anything to further to discuss here; to be quite honest, I don't believe that Aldon should settle for anything less than a full retraction of the insult. It was a racist insult, and Lestrange does owe both him and Francesca an apology for it."

"He doesn't know how to duel," I repeated. "Remind him of that—and I'll be ready to hear a withdrawal of the challenge, any time before the start of the duel."

"I doubt it," Queenscove said, turning away. "But I'll pass along the message. Including the swear words you forgot."

Aldon won the duel. Beyond all imagining—I genuinely did not think he was going to win. I do not know most of the magic that he used, for he had never duelled like that when we were at school. His warding spell, which I now suspect to be a new channelling method developed by Francesca and shown in the Triwizard Tournament, was not something I had anticipated; he also used elemental magic, of which he had never before been capable, to defend against the Killing Curse. The blood magic he used showed a depth of desperation and passion that I had not to that point seen him demonstrate, and then of course there was the end of the duel.

Aldon was prepared to kill Caelum Lestrange. I could see it in his eyes—he was very much prepared to murder Lestrange, though he did not and took his wand and a life debt instead. Were that not enough, Aldon swore a binding oath to his beloved, the most romantic gesture possible by the terms of our society; a formal, magical proposal that would have transcended any laws put in place by the Wizengamot had she accepted.

The fact that she didn't meant nothing to me. The Aldon that stood across the floor from me then was not the Aldon that I knew, and the yawning chasm between us seemed far too large to be traversed.

* * *

_11 June 1997_

What happened next?

The history books will tell you about the next six months. Voldemort attacked the Ministry of Magic on the night of the Unity Ball. Lord Riddle and the SOW Party fought him off, with the assistance of Lord Dumbledore, Professor Minerva McGonagall, the Lord Queenscove and his family, and others. But there were many casualties, my father among them, and Voldemort could no longer hide behind a mask. He was brought into the open and named, and Wizarding Britain was at open war.

In retrospect, these were likely the last six months that I could have safely done anything to escape my fate. Aldon wrote me, after the Unity Ball—a plain card expressing his condolences for the death of my father, delivered by a public owl from the Owl Post. I regret to say that I did not respond to him.

I can make a thousand excuses for why I did not respond. I look at each of them now, and none of them appear to hold any water. Individually, they are each and every one of them weak, and even more so hindsight. But as a whole, they were persuasive, and I suppose I have no choice now but to simply write them out and let them be judged for what they are.

I did not respond to Aldon first because I was busy. I am my father's only child, and I was preoccupied with the funeral arrangements and grieving. Unlike Aldon's, my family is close-knit; my mother deeply loved my father, and my father was still young when he died. We expected to have decades more with him, and his passing was difficult for us. That was my excuse, but I do not deny that I also avoided writing him for no reason other than the fact that I did not know how to write to him anymore.

As I said, the Aldon that I met at the Ministry Unity Ball was no longer the Aldon I knew. He was almost a stranger to me, one with new friends and new connections. I did not know how to approach him, and at times I told myself that he likely did not even care if I did or not, because he had new friends. He had new, wild friends, and I even convinced myself into thinking him a fool. A fool who had made poor choices, who had fallen into a seditious, revolutionary group that would only lead him to harm. My wife and I sometimes spoke of him, and we agreed that while we would be there when he failed, we could not support him. He had gone astray, falling into a bad crowd, and our support would only encourage his delusions further. At some point, he would have to fail, and then he would come back to us and we could help him regain what he had lost. Until then, we could not hitch our family's fortunes to him.

Words do not describe how much I regret those thoughts, or how much I regret those decisions. Aldon was always extremely intelligent, if rather flippant, and I should have known that he was no fool. I should have reached out to him. I should have listened to him; I should have considered his ideas fairly without assuming that he was doomed to failure. I should have had faith in him, and now I pay the price for failing to do so.

Why didn't I?

There is no easy answer, but maybe it was only that it was easier to reject him and to do nothing. Aldon had chosen a difficult path to walk, one where there were enormous risks both to him personally and to his friends, and it was easier and safer for me to remain beside Lord Riddle.

My father was highly regarded in the SOW Party, and with his passing, Lord Riddle looked to me to fill his place. I had obtained for myself a position of high esteem, and Wizarding Britain was at open war. It seemed to me, and to my wife, that we were safer beside Lord Riddle. Lord Riddle was powerful, with the might of the Ministry of Magic behind him. In the middle of people disappearing, with Azkaban Prison being attacked and prisoners freed, and the _Daily Prophet_ being burned down, it was safer to stand with Lord Riddle and the Ministry of Magic.

For context, I believe Wizarding Britain was more united in those six months than we had ever seen in our lives. Lord Dumbledore and Lord Riddle were in agreement on Voldemort, at least, and the only fly in the ointment was a small, independent paper called _Bridge_ , which I knew that Aldon followed. I do not know how future generations will see this paper; I can only say that in my time and in my acquaintance, it was not considered reliable or trustworthy. I knew few that read it. My wife and I had picked up a few issues out of curiosity, and we were taken aback by the pro-Muggle, pro-integration, pro-ICW, anti-Ministry, and anti-Wizengamot sentiment that it expressed.

 _Bridge_ was, to us, a rabble-rousing paper that divided our nation when we needed to stand strong. It perpetually wrote about problems in the Ministry, or in the SOW Party, or in the Wizengamot—it criticized the method of government that had held our nation strong for generations. Moreover, it did so at a time that we could least afford it, in the face of a present terrorist threat, and incited panic among the population. Now, of course, it seems that much of _Bridge_ 's reporting was accurate and that perhaps some of their newfangled ideas have merit, or at least more merit than we had supposed. But at the time, we simply could not take it seriously.

Perhaps, if we had, we would not have been in the wrong place, at the wrong time, when Voldemort took over Wizarding Britain.

* * *

_12 June 1997_

The coup occurred on May 31, 1996. It was a Friday, and it was the day that Hogwarts students returned home to their families for the summer. Lord Malfoy had planned a small gathering to celebrate at Malfoy Manor; it was not originally meant to be any sort of planning meeting, but given the state of the nation, it quickly became an informal opportunity for Lord Riddle to discuss with his inner circle.

I wish I had not been a part of that inner circle. Had my father lived, I likely would not have been; but he did not, and so I attended. I was very honoured to be invited to the meeting, my wife and the Selwyns with me, and I did not imagine that the night would end the way that it did—with my mother-in-law dead, and the remainder of us captured and held by Voldemort.

I do not like to think of that night. There are no words to describe the horror of an ambush, nor for the paralytic fear of defeat. Lord Riddle fell, and Voldemort lined up the survivors, including my wife and I, to watch as he made Examples—an occurrence which would later become far more routine in our lives, but would never cease to be terrible to watch. Our wands were confiscated.

The escape of Lady Rosier with Lady Malfoy, Lady Parkinson, and Draco Malfoy was very nearly the end of us. Indeed, we could only thank Pandora Parkinson for saving our lives that night—though she, too, turned into someone very different than the woman we knew. In many ways, Parkinson was a harbinger of the next six months; there were some of us among the captured who threw themselves into Voldemort's service, seeking his favour and turning into one of his followers to save their lives, and there were others who tried to avoid notice.

My father-in-law, the Lord Selwyn, was the former; my wife and I were more of the latter. We were kept under arrest at Malfoy Manor, without our wands, and there was no way for us to escape. Voldemort kept his most vicious followers, including the Lestranges, at Malfoy Manor, and we did not know the manor or the grounds well enough to plan an effective escape. No one succeeded in escaping, though the Lady Zabini tried in September. Lady Lestrange was given care of her, while the rest of us were forced to watch the screaming; I will not describe it, but the memory is unforgettable. She still breathes, but there is nothing left of her.

I fought at the side on Voldemort during the first Malfoy Manor strike, in July. I had no choice but to do so—aside from the fact that my wife was held in the Manor, under threat for my good behaviour, my father-in-law had volunteered me. I was less than pleased to be volunteered but between my father-in-law's ingratiating promise to the madman and my fear for my wife, fighting seemed to be the only option I had. What would I have done if I did not fight?

Perhaps the battle was an opportunity for my wife and I to run—it would be the last time I had a wand, though I didn't know it at the time. It would be the last time I would be able to run, though I did not know it at the time. In the chaos of a battle, would anyone really have noticed if we had made our escape with the attacking forces? But I could never have left my wife, and so the escape would have had to be closely planned… These are the thoughts that haunt me now, almost a year later, but at the time I'm afraid I did not think of it. Fear is a paralytic, and it is difficult to plan anything when one's only thoughts are about how to survive the next day, the next week, without being tortured. No one else in our circles escaped, and perhaps we also found some comfort in the fact that, even if we were hostages, we were hostages along with our closest friends and allies.

Comfort is not quite the right word. In some ways, the fact that our closest allies and friends were captured alongside us was reassuring, but we also feared what would happen on the outside. We had heard about the resistance, including _Bridge_ , but they were no friends of ours; everything we heard about them suggested that they were criminals and terrorists, and while we were being held by a terrorist, they seemed no better. If we escaped, where would we go?

Aldon was often in my thoughts during this time. I knew him to be on the outside, and from word within Malfoy Manor, I knew that he had claimed the Rosier seat and that he stood against Voldemort. If anyone could have escaped, it should have been Alice and I, for at least we had some idea of where we could go. But every time we sat down to talk about it, in hushed whispers in the safety of our prison, we always wondered: even if we made it, would Aldon welcome us? Over the past year, he had become near unrecognizable. In every moment, in every conversation, it was easier for us to do nothing.

The resistance, in any case, was ineffective. After the Malfoy Manor attack, they seemed to have fallen into dissension. Ireland broke off from Wizarding Britain, but it was without the aid of the resistance forces, and Voldemort took his vengeance on the Welsh. We knew first-hand Voldemort's power, since he had confiscated our family jewels for his Great Ward, and it seemed that there was nothing the resistance could do. Perhaps, we thought, joining the resistance was more dangerous than doing nothing.

By this time, and with my injury, my wife and I had by and large lost the attention of Voldemort. He no longer cared about us, and we faded into the background. We hoped that, with luck, we could simply outlast the war and see what world we had left at the end.

* * *

_13 June 1997_

With our relationship with Aldon, we ought to have known that Voldemort's inattention would only be temporary. It hadn't been something that had come up previously, despite the fact our close relationship was well known among Society; but I suppose that it only became an issue when Aldon began rooting out Voldemort's spies within the resistance.

I was sent to spy on Aldon. I was not happy and did not want to spy on my best friend, but Voldemort held Alice. We were taken from our relatively comfortable room in Malfoy Manor and locked in the Lestrange Manor, which was also host to the Dementors; when I went to spy, Alice was kept wandless, under Voldemort's guard. I had no choice.

When I arrived at Rosier Place for the first time, Aldon met me on the grounds. He was again a surprise; I had thought he would have abandoned his Muggle trappings when he claimed his title, he did not. Indeed, he had added Muggle weaponry, or so I assume it is, to his Muggle clothing. But when he faced me, he was also very clearly the Lord Rosier.

He examined me magically, the moment I came into range, taking out several spells on my person that I did not even know were there. Although I cannot say that I minded having the spells removed, since they were not there of my consent and I was not there willingly, I could not help but feel hurt by Aldon's clear mistrust. When he addressed me, he was cold and stern, which was an attitude that I had never heard from him before, and unlike every other time I had seen him, he did not trust me enough to turn his back on me. Even if he knew I did not hold a wand.

Our conversation only widened the divide. I attempted to begin with an easy topic, with inquiries as to the girlfriend that he had introduced to us at the Unity Ball, and while Aldon responded, he was stiffer, more reluctant, and harsher than he ever was towards me. And when the conversation turned towards our situation, Aldon was hard and demanding. He knew well that I was there in a capacity as a spy and not as a friend, and he pushed me for information almost as hard as Voldemort would later. For the first time, he used his gift against me to point out my lies.

Worst of all, however, was the fact that Aldon lied to me. He had told me that his girlfriend was studying in America and, were it not for the fact that Francesca walked into our meeting, Aldon would never have told me of his marriage. If there is no other marker of his loss of trust, it must be that Aldon lied to me about this key part of his life, and then when I left, he threatened me. "Strike at her," he said, "and I will make you wish for Voldemort's tender mercies." I knew from the expression in his eyes that he meant it.

I do not know what I expected from him. Understanding, perhaps. Sympathy. The memory of a childhood friend that I knew had once been too eager to please, with whom I believed I had an unbreakable bond, ready to stand by and help me.

But we were at war—we are at war. And in fairness to Aldon: I provided everything I learned to Voldemort, including my suspicions that his wife was behind the resistance's new magical innovations.

Voldemort was a Legilimens. I had no choice.

* * *

_14 June 1997_

When I look back on the months that followed, I only feel an intense sense of shame. I was a coward—my wife and I both were cowards, but we could see no other options. What were we to do?

At first, we were kept at Lestrange Manor. In some ways, Lestrange Manor was an improvement from Malfoy Manor—we were not surrounded by Voldemort's faithful fanatics, and by and large we were left to our own devices. We were locked in our chambers there, a suite of a single bedroom, a sitting room, and a washroom, and house-elves delivered our meals three times daily with piles of books on magical theory that we read in a quest to unravel the resistance's new magical shielding methods. Other than the times that I was released to pay a visit to Aldon, when I was monitored to the edge of his grounds and back, we saw no one.

The difficulty at Lestrange Manor was the Dementors. Lestrange Manor was where the Dementors stayed, along with Voldemort's other prisoners, and I do not know if I can describe the seeping chill of the Dementors to anyone who has not experienced it. The Dementors paced the corridors of Lestrange Manor—and under their influence we relived our worst memories. Sometimes Aldon came into these memories, with the memory of the duel where he stood on the other side, but more often these were recent memories for us.

My father's death, after the Unity Ball, along with the funeral. Voldemort's coup, where we stood in a row awaiting, we feared, our executions. My father-in-law going mad, slavishly dedicating himself to Voldemort and offering me as a volunteer in his forces; my injury at the hand of one of the Queenscoves. The pain of lying on the ground, waiting for a Healer to see to me for my injury was beyond one that I could Heal on my own, then the news that my leg would never recover. Alice being tortured, again and again—and my own willingness to sell out the closest friend I once had just to hear her screams stop.

We did not go mad, and I think the only reason we did not was that we had each other. We had each other, and we held each other every time the Dementors passed our door, every time we heard their rattling breath in the hallway, every time we felt the damp they exuded when they approached. We held each other through our nightly terrors and our drowning daymares, and that would barely enough. In these circumstances, there was no thinking of escape; we simply did not have the mental ability to plan an escape at all.

Reporting to Aldon was, in its own way, a reprieve from my circumstances. When I was there, the air felt warm, though it was the dead of winter. There were no Dementors, and Rosier Place was luxurious in its comforts—especially in comparison with the icy damp of Lestrange Manor. Aldon always had fine tea and food for me, of a higher quality than I had become used to subsisting on, and when we talked, Aldon often made it easy. There were times when he asked about Voldemort, but I never knew anything of use, and so we always moved onto easier topics.

As warm as these moments were, however, they were also a dagger. I knew that Aldon lied to me—his wife is less adept at hiding her emotions as he, and so I always knew when Aldon had said something with which she disagreed. I knew she did not like the fictional but hopeful future that we painted, just as I knew that she did not like me. Aldon never mentioned her other skills to me, but I knew well that she was far more than she seemed. I know why Aldon told me nothing, but I cannot say that it did not hurt.

It was possible for me to think of escape when I was at Rosier Place. But while I was there, Alice was always held at wand-point close to Voldemort, and I could never do anything but return. And I did, and when I did, I gave Voldemort everything that I knew and everything that I suspected, making a new memory with which the Dementors would haunt me.

Once the Scottish campaign started, Alice and I were brought along with the army. We did not see combat—rather, we were held in Voldemort's stronghold in Hogsmeade. In retrospect, this was likely our last opportunity for escape, for Voldemort and his chief enforcers were often in the field. A small contingent of Dementors and Aurors were left in Hogsmeade, but it was nothing like Malfoy Manor, or Lestrange Manor. Why didn't we try to escape?

Bluntly, I don't know. I can only think now that Alice and I must have been so inculcated into our own helplessness that we did not think of escape. We assumed, after many long months, that we could not; the Dementors at Lestrange Manor had made it so that we thought only of the next day. We thought about surviving Voldemort, but not of escaping him, because we were convinced that it simply could not be done. We had no wands, and we could not run; my leg pained me daily, especially in the damp, while Alice perpetually suffered the effects of her torture. We were not permitted Healers, who were tasked to the Aurors in the main fight, and as months went on, more of her fingers were splinted and she bore scars from the Whip Curse and other curses on her skin. The thought was put entirely out of our heads, and even if we had tried, I do not know that we could have succeeded.

The return from Scotland was worse, and it was only then that I begged my oldest friend for help.

* * *

_15 June 1997_

The trial record will tell you the rest. Pandora Parkinson caught us and warned Voldemort—and while Aldon tried to mount a rescue for us, he failed. Draco Malfoy was caught in the attempt, and we heard that he had been killed under torture. We were not so lucky.

Voldemort attacked Rosier Place in May. We know only because of the trial, for we were blamed for withholding evidence of Aldon's defences and aiding him in doing so. I wish we had; I wish that there were something, anything, that I could point to other than this memoir that said that I tried to stand against Voldemort. But I did not, and I knew nothing of the extensive defences that Aldon had built into Rosier Place. If I had, I would have no doubt told Voldemort everything, and let my friend die for it, and so I am glad that I knew nothing. I am glad that, if nothing else, Aldon has survived.

In the end, and for good or for ill, this memoir is my legacy. I was not a pureblood supremacist, I was not one of Voldemort's followers, and while my actions may not always show it, I always cared very deeply for my best friend. I look back now and I can only wish that I had more foresight, that I took more risks, that I dared to see the world as big as Aldon dreamed it could be—but I did not.

I can only hope that future generations will not think so poorly of us, for we did the best that we could, in the circumstances in which we found ourselves.

* * *

_AFTERWORD_

Edmund Aloysius Rookwood and his wife, Alesana Selwyn Rookwood, died on June 16, 1997.

Edmund was my best friend. As he says himself, we were almost brothers. I also counted Alice, whom I long believed to be a cousin, as a good friend, though our relationship was always somewhat more combative. I loved and cared for Edmund very much, and the discovery of his memoir was both a joy and a sorrow to me—a joy, because there was something left of him, but a sorrow because of the contents of what he had written.

In his memoir, Edmund says very little about his upbringing, which I believe to be critical in understanding his words. Edmund, like I, was raised in the elite; while he was not noble, he stood in the upper echelons of Society as it had once existed. His family had climbed high in the Save Our World Party's graces, and he enjoyed enough wealth that, like I, he wanted for nothing. Neither of us had any conception of our privilege, of which I only learned with the discovery of my gift, my blood-status, and eventually with my disownment from the Rosier family. Edmund's beliefs were, in fact, considerably more liberal than most of our circle; as he says, he was not a pureblood supremacist, and pureblood supremacy was the reigning belief of our time. Well do I remember my relief that he did not reject me because of my blood-status.

I feel, in reading his memoir, that I must make excuses for my oldest friend. Much of his commentary as it relates to me is based on truth. I changed very much in the years leading up to the revolution, and I did not trust my thoughts to anyone, not even to my best friend. Just as he once knew me better than anyone else, so I knew him—and I knew how to avoid his notice. I did so, because I did not believe he would approve of my plans. I did not believe that he could.

At the beginning of the revolution, Edmund stood in a very different place than I. I had been newly disowned from my noble family, while Edmund had succeeded in achieving his family's wildest dreams. He had managed to marry into the nobility, gaining direct political power and privilege; and I was prepared to see that world end, stripping him of everything that he had just won. The world that I wanted was in direct opposition to the world that he had relied on existing, and I did not see a way for us to overcome that impasse. I never made any strong efforts to bring him onto the side of the resistance, for I did not believe he would have come. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I regret that I did not do more. I ought to have trusted him to have faith in me, and to make his own choices.

In closing, I wish to emphasize that Edmund and Alice were no different from many during the revolution. The population estimates for Wizarding Britain prior to the war are on the order of approximately 50,000, but active resistance forces and supporters never numbered more than a tenth of that number. Most people, where they could, left Britain as refugees or tried to keep themselves from notice—as nobility and by virtue of their relationship to me, Edmund and Alice simply did not have the ability to do the same.

More than a decade later, I miss them both terribly. I can only hope Edmund's memoir provides some context for his, and for so many others', actions during the war.

 _Lord Aldon Étienne Blake Rosier,_ April 2008

* * *

_DISCUSSION QUESTIONS_

1\. Edmund opens his memoir by stating that he is not a pureblood supremacist. In the context of the rest of his words, is this true? What textual evidence can you find about his biases? If he wasn't a pureblood supremacist, what were his views on Muggles and the lesser-blooded?

2\. Edmund also says in his preface that he was not unfaithful. What do you think he was referring to, and do you believe that to be true? What was Edmund faithful to—or, if he wasn't faithful, why do you think he claims to be?

3\. Edmund believes the six months before Voldemort's coup were his last true opportunity to escape his fate. Do you think that is true? Why, or why not? What barriers do you think prevented Edmund from leaving the SOW Party? Are you convinced by Edmund's reasons as he wrote them?

4\. Edmund emphases repeatedly that he is not a Voldemort supporter, and that what he did was done out of fear for himself and his family. Do you believe that his fear was a good justification for his actions during the war? What other barriers prevented Edmund from leaving, as he said that he wanted, or even planned, to do?

5\. Edmund and Aldon agree that they saw each other as their closest friends, almost as brothers, and yet they ended up on opposite sides of the revolution. How did that happen, and where did they fall apart? How close do you believe their relationship truly was?

**Author's Note:**

> Did I just write a short textbook? I did indeed-I always found Edmund to be an interesting character because he is the prototypical bystander. I don't think his actions throughout the war, based on what he knew at the time, were ever completely unreasonable, and I find his ultimate fate to be more sad than anything else. Obviously no one actually has to write an essay, but if you wanted to in a review or comment...


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